Born Out of Time
by TheAeacusProject
Summary: AU: Just weeks after graduating college, a series of devastating natural disasters strike the North Atlantic, destroying the idyllic summer Naomi and Emily are enjoying.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: **Some of my favorite fics on here are of the AU/post-apocalypse/disaster-related variety. So I reckoned I've give it a go, too, because why not. I tried to start this back early in the summer, but couldn't seem to properly concentrate on writing two stories at once. Now that The Ultimate Currency is finished, I decided to revisit this, and for those who read that piece, I'm giving the whole writing two-at-a-time another go and 'The Loudest One in the Room' will be up soon. In the meantime...  
**I don't own Skins or the characters.**

* * *

**Post #1: My One Responsibility to the People**

It was my mom's idea to start a blog chronicling my summer vacation before going off to college—uh, the American kind, I guess, since a lot of you out there probably call it uni. See, I hadn't traveled overseas since I was five, and at that age you remember very little of where you went. Sure, maybe you can jog your memory by looking through the old, stiff photos your mom had developed from the yellow, clunky disposable Kodak cameras that had been all the rage back then, but that's not really remembering if you have to look at the picture to make the association.

At least, not to me. So I told her around Christmas that I wanted to go to Europe before going off to start in the military commissioning program at State (reduced tuition, a book stipend, and a small monthly paycheck in return for working out and knowing how to drink without getting into trouble? I'd have been an idiot not to accept their scholarship). Besides, I told her, I'd have to keep my nose clean for four years to maintain that scholarship, and I needed to let off steam, unleash my inner rebel child.

'Cause I totally have one.

Somewhere, deep down.

At least, that's what I argued at the time. Now it's not so much a figure of a speech anymore. I am a rebel child, so to speak.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. The blog. The one you're reading right...now. This one. _Ese blog. _Or something like that; I've lost my Spanish over the year. But that's besides the point. The point is why I decided to start writing this blog.

My mom agreed to help me get everything together for my passport and help plan an itinerary. But money was tight for her (reason #31 why an ROTC scholarship sounded like all that and a bag of chips re: paying for college), and traveling overseas is juuuust a little bit expensive for a recently graduated senior. So she came up with the idea of fundraising for it, asking family and friends to donate x or y amount of money to my 'Eurotrip' fund. And yes the humor was lost on her—my mom's not big into raunchy comedies. In return for their "buying stock" in my trip, I was required to acquire certain knick knacks, postcards, or trinkets from various locales in Europe...'where the history comes from,' yeah? But no matter how much money my scam conned you into giving, it did buy you a 'subscription'' to this blog.

So first things first: sorry for admitting that I scammed you out of anywhere from a couple bucks (that was really heartfelt, Aunt Geraldine) to a couple hundred (you really didn't have to, Mr. Brown, even if you were trying to bribe me to date your daughter). But I hope you find this entertaining and enlightening. 'Cause it started out as a way to tell everyone in PG-terms how much fun I had backpacking across Europe, learning about my heritage, how not to play Risk, and how not to butcher accents that all my friends back here think they have down to a 'T.'

Obviously, it hasn't exactly panned out that way. I never actually made it to the Continent, at least not as quickly as my mom's carefully delineated itinerary expected me to. I did get there, for a brief time, but we'll get to that eventually.

I never expected to be diverted to Bristol on my flight into London, but then again, no one ever expected Guernsey to become a twenty-first century Atlantis, the Low Countries to become a malaria-infested marshland, the cliffs of Dover to crumble and fall into what used to be the English Channel, or for London to disappear in a sinkhole. Like a massive sinkhole.

Of course, it's pretty much all one big sea now, and we, the gang I mean—Effy, Cook, Freddie, Emily, and I—we'd all go down and hang out on the 'Urban Shore' where you could sit, toes in the warm water and your back up against what was still functioning as a coffee shop, albeit one with about a half inch of standing water on the floor at high tide.

But damn, I'm getting ahead of myself again. So yeah. Let's start at the beginning, when I met everyone.

Oh, and in case you've forgotten in the days and months since Lynx became the main security provider for the 1% and climate change ceased to be a theoretical exercise, I'm Ethan Theodore James the Third.

But everyone calls me Trey.

The gang does, just like my friends used to back home. Right, the gang. And how I met them. Well, actually, strike that. First a disclaimer: apparently the gang used to be bigger. A lot bigger than the four plus me, at least. They don't talk about it much. Effy doesn't talk much at all, really, so that's not a surprise. But Freddie and Cook clam up sometimes if something comes up, which happens maybe once a day or every other day. Emily...she handled it the worst at first, but over the months she's steeled herself. None of them let it affect what we do, but when we're just lounging, like right now, the tension is right there.

Names get floated out there sometimes, by accident usually: Thomas, Katie, Naomi, Pandora, Michelle, Karen. Some are siblings from what I've gathered; others friends; others more than that. And in this fucked up not-world that we're struggling through, of course the only communication they've had from any of them is a single-sentence email all the way from the bloody Congo (see that, sis? I used bloody in a sentence) that Thomas sent all of them letting them know his family was okay and he was protecting them. Otherwise, there's been nothing.

And judging by the sounds coming from behind me in the shed, Cook knicked Freddie's spliff again.

I'll be right back; that's really good shit. (Sorry Mom, yeah I've kinda figured it's okay to do drugs if the world's falling to pieces. It really is the end of the world as we know it, and I'm going to feel fine).

Okay, now I'm really gone. For now...

* * *

**One Year Earlier**

Naomi lazily smiled at the feeling of someone laughing while resting against her. The vibrations soothed her and intertwined harmoniously with the steady splash, advance, and retreat of the tide, and the rustling of ferns and cattails behind them along the hilly edge of the beach. She closed her eyes and focused only on the sounds around her, the peaceful scene disappearing from sight, only for it to be painted anew in her mind's eye from the images created by a plethora of sounds and smells. The briny sea salt smell mingled with the heavy scent of burning firewood; occasional crackles from the make-shift campfire at Naomi's feet added themselves to the sounds swirling through her mind. And yet, there was one last smell that lingered, penetrating the others...

"Is that vanilla?"

"Hmm?" Naomi felt Emily's head shift on her stomach as the smaller teen turned to squint with one eye along Naomi's body. "Yeah, s'pose."

"Huh," replied Naomi She rolled her bottom lip out thoughtfully, but lapsed back into silence. She reopened her eyes; gulls wheeled and squawked overhead in a sky painted in progressively darker hues of blue as she cast her gaze from east to west and populated with thicker and thicker steel grey clouds the farther out to sea she looked. Naomi was lying parallel to the coast, increasingly frothy waves marking high tide off her right shoulder and the breeze-bent ferns many meters uphill off her left. Looking out across the whitecaps, Naomi sniffed a new, distinct smell, that of impending rain.

She felt Emily sit up and Naomi wriggled to a reclining position, elbows sunk into the sand behind her. She watched Emily twist and look out at the thunderheads gathering off the coast, nose wrinkling at the same mood-darkening smell Naomi had detected. The first, faint reports of thunder echoed across the water from dozens of kilometers offshore, reinforcing the foul weather's insidious presence.

Further up the shore, nearer to the access road, tourists scurried to and fro, packing up beach chairs, picnic blankets, and improvised pitches while yelling at their children to pick up the ball instead of trying to kick it back to their car. Naomi shook her head and turned back to stare into the dancing, mesmerizing flames of their small fire.

"Have you seen Katie?" asked Emily, standing and shielding her eyes from the reflection of the dwindling afternoon sun as it shone off the sea.

Naomi looked back up the shore, then down it past the fire. "Not for hours. I—" She caught herself as a blip of familiar reddish-purple hair appeared amidst the green and beige cattails far down the beach. The small spot of color was accompanied by a slightly larger, brown shape that split and headed away down the beach as the blip Naomi thought was Katie coalesced into the other twin, hair tousled and skin flushed.

Naomi stood and made herself busy splashing water on the flames, gathering their towels, and shaking out the slips they had worn over their swimming costumes. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of Emily, arms crossed and a perturbed look on her face, standing next to the dying fire as she waited for Katie to return from her tryst. Katie had insisted on coming with them on what Naomi and Emily originally planned as a celebratory getaway—celebrating the end of college, the end of their months-long animosity towards one another, and ultimately celebrating one last weekend of peace before a furious week of packing, planning, and organizing before their trip to Goa. It was the forthcoming trip that Katie used as her excuse to tag along: "You'll be able to shag on beaches half a world away, for Christ's sake. You can manage one weekend here without it. Besides, I won't get to see Ems again until we're moving into school, and that's rather pitiful, don't you think?"

Naomi didn't think so, since she'd had Emily all to herself for the first sixteen years of their lives, but she kept her mouth shut and agreed to tolerate the elder twin's presence for a couple days; regardless, it had not precluded them from the sex Katie seemed to think was so unnecessary for them to enjoy. _And it's not like Katie had any trouble pulling either...where the fuck did she find that guy?!_

"Who the hell was that?" exclaimed Emily scant moments later as Katie came within earshot. Naomi looked up with a smirk; clearly they had shared opinions on Katie's activities.

"John? Joel...Justin? Whatever. I was walking and he ran past me, then doubled back and we got to talking."

"Mmm, yeah, sounds like you skipped the pleasantries and got straight to it, then," commented Naomi dryly as the wind picked up, swirling sand around the campsite.

"Yeah, sounds like he's quite loquacious," added Emily as she walked behind Katie and picked up one of their bags. As she bent over, she winked at Naomi.

"Fuck off, you two. Just because—"

Lightning lanced down out of the sky far too close off shore for comfort and, seconds later, a loud clap of thunder resonated over the beach. The sky continued to darken over the tumultuous waves.

"I think we should probably be going," said Naomi softly.

"I think I agree with you," Katie replied, equally worried at the approaching storm. The three girls stood still, staring out at the lightning as the narrow, jagged streaks of bluish-white became more and more frequent. Intermittently, fat raindrops began to fall along the beach, staining the pale sand like a dark beige spotted print.

Katie shrieked and turned, fleeing towards the hills bracketing the beach, when a single drop of rain landed on her shoulder. Her bag and towel lay forgotten behind her; Naomi smirked across the ashes of the fire at Emily and called after Katie, "Afraid you're going to melt, Katiekins? It's just a bit of rain."

The rain-laden clouds chose that precise moment to unleash their payload on the beachgoers, the spotty drizzle of heavy raindrops giving way to smaller, faster bullet-like drops that stung and pierced the skin repeatedly; thunder rumbled overhead again.

"Shit! Come on!" Emily cried, following her sister's lead and taking off up the beach as the sand continued to darken and soften beneath her feet. Grabbing Katie's things in addition to her own, Naomi gritted her teeth and chased after the Fitch sisters, running with her head down and shoulders hunched slightly against the cold rain. An increasingly violent wind whistled across the water behind her.

Katie disappeared over the lip of the hills just as Naomi drew even with Emily at the foot of them. Lightning struck the sand a meter ahead of them, eliciting a surprised scream from Naomi as she hopped to the side. The deafening report of thunder was instantaneous, but as it faded, a harsh cracking continued to fill the air along the upper parts of the beach and further inland. Emily and Naomi exchanged a concerned glance, looking down at their feet.

"That didn't sound like thunder," Emily said as they slogged uphill.

"I think it came from _below_," Naomi replied in several gasps.

Their feet sank further and further into the sand. Emily grasped at ferns for support, but they snapped off in her hand. She pitched forward and scrambled towards the road on all fours, wet hair falling in her face and pebbles of sand sticking to her wrists, forearms, and knees. Her struggle did not last long, though, as she felt strong hands on her left tricep and under her armpit. Stumbling to her feet, Emily parted the soaked ends of her hair and looked up at Naomi with relief.

"Thanks."

"Don't mention it," Naomi replied with a small smile.

"Are you two going to hurry up, or have a go in the rain?" Katie's exasperated voice cut through the wind, drawing Emily's attention. Her twin was standing at the crest of the hill, looking down on them disapprovingly. Emily and Naomi exchanged a bemused glance and resumed their trudge uphill. By the time they reached Katie, they were thoroughly soaked through, towels rendered useless and fringed with sand.

"Well, this is shit," observed Naomi dryly as they started across the road. A second sharp cracking sound like the slow splintering of a thick piece of wood under great strain emanated from the ground beneath their feet. It persisted for nearly a minute, bringing Katie to a halt in the middle of the street. Emily and Naomi quickened their pace as they headed for the car park on the far side of the road.

"What the fuck was that?" asked Katie as it died away. She looked down at her feet, frightened. Naomi and Emily turned together, squinting into the biting slant-rain still pressing in from the sea. Emily locked eyes with her twin; the sounds of waves crashing against the shore, of rain pelting against the road and her exposed skin, of wind howling in her ears muddled together in an increasingly loud buzzing that drowned out whatever Naomi was saying to her.

Without warning, the road behind Katie buckled and collapsed in on itself, black asphalt lined with yellow and white shattering into tiny pieces and large islands of rock. Jagged gaps spread out from some point not far out in the ocean, skeletal fingers of nothingness in the archipelago of stone that was only moments before a rain-slicked road. Katie screamed as the spot she was standing on shifted and sank slightly, fissures coursing around it as the cracking and shearing intensified.

Emily was frozen, rooted in place at the impossible destruction nature was delivering to the world around them. Naomi, however, was not: She darted forward, grabbing Katie by the hand and pulling her southward along the road—away from Emily. The sparsely grassed area between the road and car park shifted underneath Emily's feet, and she dropped her towel and bag to race after her twin and girlfriend.

The three of them scrambled down the road, sprinting as fast as they could on the slick surface as cracks spider-webbed the road underneath their feet and spread farther and farther inland to their left. Katie let go of Naomi's hand and looked back over her shoulder, reassuring herself that Emily was still following them. Lightning continued to strike down around them, spotting their vision and illuminating the rapidly expanding web of shattered stone and rock. Along their right, the beach pitched up and downwards as a pressure wave radiated outward from the epicenter of the earthquake off the coast. It passed underneath the road, upending cars and hurtling them into ever-expanding crevasses.

Emily staggered, placing a hand on the ground to steady herself, but found herself falling to the ground despite her efforts. Rock in the ground behind her sheared, and she jumped away from the growing gap in the road, looking for her sister or Naomi. She spied Katie pulling Naomi across a newly created crevice and the two of them teetering on the unstable island of asphalt. Focusing on not catching her foot in a small crack, or stumbling into a larger one, Emily made her way along the road until she was even with them.

"We have to get further inland!" she yelled into the wind. Naomi and Katie looked up, but their expression clearly told Emily that the exact message had not made it to them. "We can't stay here!" Two heads shook frustratedly in response.

Emily furrowed her eyebrows and picked her way closer to them, nervously feeling another large wave rumble through the broken ground beneath her feet. It seemed distant, but if the most recent wave was any indication, it wouldn't be long until it arrived. Naomi and Katie simultaneously made their way towards the middle of the road, moving laterally to the south as they did by necessity. Rivers of water raced down angled pieces of roadway into the fissures between broken pieces of bedrock.

Finally, Katie yelled out, "Ems, we have to get out of here!" The wind carried her voice, and Emily nodded vigorously in return. The three came to a sliding, awkward halt on a large, somewhat stable piece of highway by the boot of a dilapidated Ford. Emily looked up and down the road, trying to make out a landmark in the rain.

"There should be a bridge just down there, right?"

"I think so," shouted back Naomi. She looked at Katie who shrugged. Another ominous rumble created new veins in the rock around them.

"Right," said Katie definitively. "Let's head for the bridge and hopefully we can get across it before it's gone."

She set off at a jog, Emily and Naomi falling into stride next to her. Their pace was slow as they skipped over small cracks and tip-toed their way along the edge of large crevices. Where the road remained flat, they ran as quickly as they could with the rain and cross-wind working against them. The immediate return of thunder from the constant lightning intertwined with the more and more frequent reverberations of the next pressure wave as it neared the shore. All three pairs of eyes glanced out at the raging ocean, then back down at their feet to ensure their footfalls fell true.

Suddenly, the asphalt changed from black to a light grey concrete, still replete with innumerable cracks. Emily looked up hopefully and felt her heart soar. The bridge was still partially intact, its massive steel cables descending down from a single point high above the center of the bay like the spokes of some invisible wheel that bisected the middle of the bridge. While the steel support structure was visible in many places, enough concrete still remained that dozens of people were picking their way south ahead of them. Cars stood abandoned or damaged beyond repair in each lane of the highway; Emily, Naomi, and Katie were forced to climb over a couple that had slid perpendicular to the road and blocked passage along the shoulder-high barriers that blocked the steel suspension cables from the roadway.

They caught up to a young man and woman supporting one another as they slowly crossed the bridge—her right leg supported no weight and she leaned upon the man for support, despite the visibly painful cut he was sporting across the back of his left shoulder. Emily slowed to look back at them as they jogged past, and just as she slowed, the growing swell of a massive wave caught her attention. It was moving along the bay towards the bridge as the rumbling of the next pressure wave apexed. Emily whirled, screaming incoherently at her sister and girlfriend to find something to hold onto, but she was too late.

The seismic wave pushed the storm surge into the bridge first. The force of the wave slammed Emily and the couple to the concrete as water impacted the barriers, broke through, and washed violently across the bridge. Emily was tossed like a rag doll backwards with the flow of water, hitting the barrier on the inner part of the roadway. Air left her body in a rush, the wind knocked from her; she gasped for air only to take in briny water instead. Coughing and sputtering, she pressed against the barrier as water continued to rush over and past her.

She slowly turned her head to look left, down the bridge, at where she thought Katie and Naomi should be. The roadway was completely empty.

_NO!_ The internal scream echoed in Emily's head as she struggled against the last vestiges of the storm surge, making it onto her knees with one hand on the barrier behind her. She looked back the way they had come, ignoring the young woman with the injured leg, who was curled in the fetal position maybe ten meters away. Making a slow turn, Emily looked back down along the highway, rubbing at her eyes to clear her vision from the rain and water still splashing at her from the surge.

Behind a car, which was angled unnaturally towards the outer barrier of the bridge, something shifted and Emily pushed herself to her feet. She gasped for air unsuccessfully twice before finally inhaling enough to move. Stumbling ahead, bent nearly double against the elements, she corrected herself: _someone_ was seeking shelter between the car and outside barrier of the bridge. The person was sitting, back against the car, feet wedged against the barrier. Emily waved her arms in large circles as a gust of wind howled up the bay, threatening to knock her off her feet. She placed her left foot over her right, side-stepping across the road and into the wind, peering at the person hiding next to the car. As the person turned, Emily again lost the ability to breath.

"Naomi! Naoms!" What she intended as shouts came out as strangled cries, but somehow they carried the short distance and the blonde girl turned towards the sound, wincing fiercely as she did.

"Ems. Katie, she..." Naomi coughed up water and shook her head.

"Are you alright?" Emily crouched down and started shuffling towards her..

"I'm so—"

The pressure wave trailing the storm surge hit the bridge, buckling the supports beneath the roadway. Emily recoiled, scrambling backwards on all fours away from the chasm tearing through the bridge between her and the car. Naomi's eyes widened in fear, locking with Emily's as she stared across the impassable distance. The piece of bridge underneath the car and Naomi lurched downwards, the steel supports straining momentarily. As the roadway shifted, Emily saw that Naomi was cradling her left arm across her lap. Emily's attention was drawn, though, back up to her eyes, which seemed to be expressing regret, sorrow, and defiance all at once.

"Naomi, NO!" Finally, Emily's voice returned and she stood shakily, taking a step towards her girlfriend.

The supporting cables running inside the concrete of the bridge torqued and snapped, plummeting massive sections of the bridge in front of Emily down to the water below. She pitched forward to her knees right at the edge of the sheared roadway as the bridge collapsed, fingers scrabbling furiously for a grip as she watched the car—and Naomi—disappear into the roiling waters of the bay. Emily's fingers found purchase on the rough edge of the bridge, and she dropped to her belly, hand extended futilely towards the water.

"No, no, no..."


	2. Chapter 2

**Post #2: How I ended up here, in Bristol, with these**** Wankers**

_I guess we're young enough to live it up  
__And old enough to give a fuck  
__So what's the point in never giving up?_  
_Cause we're just givin' them everything they gave to us_  
_-"Youth," The Dean's List_

I consider myself lucky that I was airborne when everything went to hell in a handbasket—in this case a handbasket the size of the Northern Atlantic. My flight was supposed to land in London at some ridiculously early hour, and so it's pitch dark outside those really shitty, plastic-y airplane windows with all the smudge marks and stains on them; meanwhile, I'm in the window seat and there's this really chatty lady sitting in the aisle seat berating the disinterested, half-asleep and (probably) senile woman between us with stories of her children and how they're incredible and perfect angels, but everyone's out to get them because they're jealous of them and, like, totally immature. Gah, I wanted to yell at her to shut up, but I just turned up my music and shifted what little bit my broad-shouldered frame would allow in the Economy-class seating.

It wasn't much.

And I was about _this_ close to snapping after she tried to blame the principal for being unreasonable for giving them after-school detention when they created an exclusionary club and continually insulted the students they didn't want in the group, but right then the captain came over the intercom. He was talking in that half-uncomfortable, half-disconnected voice they always pass information in: _Goood morning _(shit, it's really the morning was my first thought and I probably missed his next few words, but I'm willing to guess there were several uh's and ah's) _to begin our initial descent into London, but, uh, there's been a, ah, slight change of plans and we will be landing in Bristol about, ah, thirty minutes earlier than our expected, uh, arrival time. You'll see that the, uh, fasten seat belt sign is illuminated _(gee, ya think) _and I'd ask everyone to please, um, stay in your seats until we are safely on the ground. It could get a little, uh, bumpy first. If I could ask the flight attendants, please prepare the cabin for arrival._

For the record, bumpy didn't begin to describe it. We came down through the southernmost edge of the storm absolutely pummeling Ireland and the Irish Sea and it no longer mattered what was going on with my aislemate's children because she couldn't do anything but moan and groan at the rocking and buffeting the plane received. I banged my shoulder against the frame of the plane more times than I can remember—and accidentally elbowed the elderly lady next to just as frequently. After, oh, seven or eight I quit apologizing and just focused on not yacking as the turbulence intensified the further we descended.

Someone behind us couldn't fight the urge, though, and the unmistakable sound of somebody hurling reached my ears. I gritted my teeth and braced against the frame as we finally got low enough to see blurry orange city lights below and ahead of us. There were small lights dotted across the rest of the countryside, but for the most part the ground looked black and uninhabited. Not sure which was true. Doesn't matter, really. All that matters is that for the next fifteen minutes I probably averaged one acid reflux per, and the aftertaste made me wince and air my tongue out over and over. Really classy behavior, I know.

Then the plane—straight up—slid sideways. Like a puck on ice. People were screaming all over the place and at that exact moment, I seriously wondered if I'd ever reach the ground. The strain of the engines increased but the entire craft wavered and slowly started losing altitude. But the pilot pulled some Sully shit and got us back on trajectory to land. He may not have been a good public speaker, but shit, what did that matter as long as he could fly the damn plane. We came in really, really freaking fast, and the plane hopped, jarred back down twice when the wheels hit the rain-soaked runway, and rumbled over some small cracks in the tarmac that didn't look like they were worn from use or seasons of rainfall, expanding ice, and thawing temperatures.

It wasn't really a long taxi from the runway to the gate, but it did take them an ass-long time to unload all the bags and hook up the connector, walkway thing going to the terminal. So I had to endure more prattling by that infernal woman. Music wouldn't even save me this time, 'cause she was screaming bloody murder and insisting she be allowed off first to 'call her angels.'

Spare me.

Looking back on it, getting off a plane is a lot like a sling-shot. The tension and potential energy builds up as the line stacks up and people wriggle into the aisle, delaying others to reach their carry-ons stowed eight seats away, and then when it's your turn and all you have is a rucksack that fit under the seat in front of you, you explode down the aisle, speed-walking past the flight attendants, and emerging in the connector. So I hurried up to the terminal proper, and I had no...flipping idea what I was going to do, stuck in a foreign country, and in a city I never expected to visit. All I had was my ruck with a sparse inventory consisting entirely of:

—Five pairs socks/skivvies

—Two concert t-shirts (uh, Aerosmith and Rush)

—One extra set of jeans

—My journal, which I promised to bring and write notes down in so that I wouldn't wing these blog entries

—And the USB chargers for my iPod and phone. Yeah, I have to clarify that because I still have one of those old-school spin wheel ones, which is awesome because my peer group has terrible long-term muscle memory and they've all forgotten how to use it in the wake of touch screens, etc. So it's like it's on permanent lock. Genius.

But yeah, so I was standing awkwardly in the airport with my passport in hand, watching the line of people pass me by. That's when I caught a glimpse of the TV. It's on in one of those over-priced, faux-fancy airport bars that's some spin-off of a well-to-do bar elsewhere, and the TV was showing this sweeping view of a coastline from a helicopter. There's a massive floodlight shining down on the jetsam-littered beach, but it wasn't the debris that everyone was muttering about as more and more of us travellers pushed closer around the walk-in seating that spilled out into the food court. I was the gash in the earth running straight inland with countless smaller crevices snaking out in every direction. The main gash was probably fifty feet wide, I'd guess, and judging from the destruction and ruined cars lining the road, the depth and force of it was severe.

The camera cut to a different view, this time of a destroyed bridge along some shallow bay on the coast. There were cables dangling—clearly doing a terrible job of suspending the bridge at this point, and the side of the bridge closest to the open ocean had been gouged through in several places, splitting it into four or five pieces. Larger-than-usual waves, white caps and all, were still surging past the support pillars rising up in the water, and I heard snippets about "integrity," "few hours at the best," "emergency personnel...missing." Then the scene changed again and I elbowed my way out of the gaggle.

With the line completely empty at customs, I walked through uninterrupted, had my passport stamped, and I sniggered at the requisite "Enjoy your visit," the security guy gave me. I was already not enjoying it. And judging by the weather outside, England was none too happy to have me either: the rain was coming down in sheets, right, and there were veritable waterfalls cascading off the overhangs at the taxi stand. I hopped in one car and, when he leaned over the back of the front seat and asked, "Where to, mate?" I just kinda shrugged and said something like downtown? with awkward, unintentional question mark included. And sure enough, that's where he dropped me off.

On the way, though, I couldn't help but ask just what in the world was going on that a flight would get diverted from London to Bristol, when there was clearly plenty of damage done in this region as well. Tree branches had snapped and were (mostly) pushed off the road, but the cabbie still swerved around several; there were more of the narrow cracks I guessed were from the earthquake that hit further north; traffic lights blinked uselessly—clearly, power had been lost and restored, but many lights were not reset. The cabbie told me that the quake had caused some minor damage, but that flooding was the bigger issue, and multiple runways were closed. I told him it seemed like Bristol was damn lucky to have not suffered the same fate and he grunted, focusing on the drive.

Downtown effing Bristol. I was at the bottom of this hill and water was running like a river down it, completely soaking my shoes and the bottom of this pair of jeans. I had the foresight to ask if there's a hostel around I can bunk in, but the cabbie just shrugged and pointed back the way we had come. Wonderful. So, I trudged through the water, away from the big open space to my left, which under the street lights looked to be a flooded-out green space, and up a side street to try and find some high(er) ground.

It's at the very top of the next street that my luck started to turn, although if you asked either of us immediately afterwards, it certainly didn't feel like it. I didn't bother look to see if anyone was on the streets with me at this hour, figuring that (according to the airport clocks) 4:28 a.m. isn't exactly the high point of Bristol nightlife. Well, turned out there's at least one person who thinks every minute of every hour of every night was—and still is—the high point of Bristol nightlife, and I picked the worst opportune time to cross an intersection.

He was sprinting down another street and I rounded a corner directly into his path. All I saw was a flash of movement in the dark, an incoherent shout from somebody further up the road, and then we were falling into the street as he tackled me and we splashed into the water. The water was still falling back down to the street beneath us when I punched him in the side and rolled downhill to get away. We both came to our feet and started circling one another, and other than the blood pounding in my ears, the only thing I was focusing on was the sodden rucksack on my back. It was weighing me down and felt like the last bit of icing on the miserable rain-soaked cake that night had become. So I figured, to hell with it, and I motioned for him to come at me. He laughed and asked me,

"Do you really want to do this, mate? 'Cause I don't think you do."

Oh, believe me, on any other night I wouldn't, but at that point on _that_ night...yeah, I wanted to punch something. So I shuffled closer and was about to let a punch go when somebody yelled from the corner for us to stop. Turning, I saw this tall, lanky, soaked mongrel I'd soon come to know as Freddie walking towards us. We both paused at his shout. He waded out to us, and it was then I got my first look at the third member of their little search party. She was walking along as if it wasn't raining at all, as if it were a calm, clear night and she was perfectly at peace with everything. You never quite shake the first time you see Effy Stonem, honestly.

I could vaguely hear Cook and Freddie arguing behind me (something like "He fucking ran into me, man!" "Well I don't think he fucking meant to, y'know?!"), but I was rooted to the spot, staring right back at Effy as she approached me. Stopping a foot away from me (yeah, ya'll can do the conversion on your own if you want), she cocked her head to the side a bit and smirked.

"You're an American."

I remember gaping, starting to ask incredulously at how she knew, but it didn't really matter as the rain continued to pour down and I started shivering in my already-saturated clothes. Instead I shrugged and asked if there was a hotel nearby I could check into.

She shook her head and nodded past me. "That's Freddie, and the guy you ran into is Cook. You help us find our friends and you'll have a place to stay."

Well, shit. That sounded fair enough, and I didn't have much else to fall back on, so I agreed and fell in step with Freddie and Effy as Cook took off up another block yelling people's names.

We've only found one so far, so I'm still here.

With them.

And even though at first it seemed like just that much more shit, I'll be damned if it wasn't the luckiest meeting I'll ever have.

* * *

The fall to the bay below took longer than Naomi anticipated. Eyes squeezed shut, breath held, she hit the raging water and immediately sank below the surface. The car she had been leaning against plummeted to the bottom as its heavy mass took it down and away from Naomi. The flood current tugged her under even further and farther inland, though with her eyes closed she had no real sense of direction. Pressure built in her inner ear and she blindly tried to claw her way up to the surface using only her right arm. Her left wrist throbbed with pain, and the impact with the water had only exacerbated it.

A piece of debris from the bridge clipped her hip and Naomi felt herself get spun around, albeit slowly, as she floundered towards the surface. Yet another lance of pain tore through her nerves, joining those shooting up her arm from her injured wrist and the burning sensation in her breast from continuing to hold her breath underwater. _You need to breathe! Air! NOW!_ Naomi steeled herself against the urgent pleas her mind received. Panicking about the situation wouldn't help, and even though it seemed to have been minutes, the rational part of her mind knew it had been more like fifteen or twenty seconds. Instead of giving in and swallowing water, she snorted a handful of small bubbles out of her nose, helping to alleviate the build-up of carbon dioxide her body was so desperate to correct.

She kicked violently, propelling herself upwards, and breaking through at the trough of a wave. Naomi simultaneously released the breath she was holding and opened her eyes. Rain thundered down, rhythmically striking the waves and her head as it continued to fall; lightning zig-zagged in every direction across the sky. She took several quick breaths, trying to time them with the passage of waves. A large plank rode the crest of one, and she kicked her way towards it, straining to grab it as it followed the current. Naomi felt her fingertips brush the rough wood, but it popped out from under her reach.

"Shit!" she gasped and lunged again, water inadvertently rising into her mouth. She spit it out and coughed, fingers scraping the plank underwater. The wave passed, and her fingertips found purchase. Naomi groaned in relief, pulling the plank up to her collarbone and resting her bad wrist across it. She took a moment to survey her surroundings, getting her bearings after being pushed around by the current. She was facing the northern shore of the bay, with the bridge on her left. She churned her legs in the water and slowly rotated so that she was facign into the current and could evaluate her path through the water. The bridge looked terrible: cables waving in the wind, pieces of rebar sticking out into the air, and concrete continuing to crumble into the water. Nobody else seemed to be in the water with her that she could see, but the aggravated sea state and heavy rain made it nearly impossible to see anything except the hulking shape of the bridge clearly.

Naomi twisted once more, looking at the nearby southern shoreline. There were a handful of lights dancing in the storm-induced darkness, which she could only assume were torch lights carried by rescuers, people fleeing, or both. She knew yelling would be worthless with the rain, wind, and thunder providing a deafening soundtrack to her plight, but working slowly towards the shore was a start, at least, and she tried to kick in that direction, arms crossed on top of the plank. The ocean persisted in having other ideas about her progress, though, forcing her further into the bay and repeatedly dumping waves over her head.

More and more pieces of floatsam tumbled over the waves around her, floating by on top of the water as well as swirling past underneath, pulled by the current and peppering her with indefensible pains and nicks that cut through the soaked slip she still wore over her swimming costume. Naomi winced repeatedly when the small bits of rock and rubber and plastic dug into her hip where the large piece struck her previously, but she continued her efforts to kick towards the shore.

As the minutes dragged on and the rain refused to let up, she closed her eyes and tried to focus only on the steady rise and fall of her feet, toes pointed back at some invisible point behind her, and knees straight allowing her entire leg to snap through each kick. She tried to recall swim lessons from her youth to block out the pain, but the distraction only succeeded for so long. Inevitably, it gave way to what had—quite literally—dropped her into this predicament. She could not unsee Emily's horrified expression at finding Naomi wedged between the car and the barrier of the bridge. Then the bridge had sheared in two, separating them, and Naomi had closed her eyes in anticipation of the plunge; the desperate sound of Emily's voice reverberating in Naomi's ears, joining the discordant sounds of the storm, and the look of anguish on her face seared to the inside of her eyelids as she hit the water.

_You didn't have a choice. If you had encouraged her to come to you, she'd be here in the water, adrift, just like you instead of safe up on the bridge, _Naomi tried to rationalize over and over again, wondering just how true it was. Naomi turned her head, looking over the white caps at the shape of the bridge. She hoped Emily was still alright and not swimming mindlessly in the bay looking for her; that would be futile, Naomi knew, as the current seemed to be developing a mind of its own. Glancing away from the bridge, Naomi noticed she was noticeably closer to the southern shore than she had been ten, maybe fifteen minutes earlier. But something drew her attention back to the west, towards the bridge.

The span was starting to quiver, cables snapping and twisting above the roadways. Horror mounted in Naomi's gut as she saw the supports underneath beginning to waver and teeter under the constant force of the storm surge. Straining to get a better view, Naomi began to push herself up higher on the plank. She instantly regretted it. A powerful wave crashed down on her, ripping the plank out of her grip and pulling her underwater. She spun and thrashed, blocking out the pain in her side and wrist to fight back above the surf. Then, Naomi heard it: off in the distance, the sound propagating much further in the water, there was a low rumbling of an aftershock far off in the ocean.

As the wave passed and Naomi was able to gasp for air once more, she began stroking with her one good arm, renewing her struggle towards the shore. The rumbling continued to grow louder, even with her head above the water, and Naomi kicked harder to make it to the shore before this first real aftershock brought a new storm surge down upon her. Looking away from the bridge and open ocean, Naomi was relieved to find that the current had developed a mind of its own, dragging her slightly towards the southern shore it moved inland.

A long, hair-raising squeal cut through the storm. Naomi again whipped her head around to look towards the bridge. The surge Naomi hoped to avoid was already arriving at the bridge, battering the supports beneath and eliciting the squealing sound from the metal within as it bent and caved under the force of the surge and the aftershock. At a painstakingly slow rate, each support buckled completely and sank into the water. Above, the bridge self-destructed at the same plodding rate, depositing more and more concrete, cars, and metal into the bay.

"Emily!" The shout was out of her throat before Naomi realized she was screaming, her sacrifice seemingly for naught as she watched the bridge fall, piece-by-piece, into the bay. The surge passed her even as she cried out, dragging her underwater again and casting Naomi in what seemed like ten directions at once. The pressure in her ears grew again, and she held her breath as the violent waves moved above her head.

_Thud._ Naomi felt her foot strike something solid, and her eyes snapped open underwater. The salt stung her eyes, forcing them closed again. Awkwardly, Naomi fumbled around with her good hand, tracing the shape of the object in the darkness. _What the fuck is_—her curiosity was replaced by relief at the feel of sand in her fingers as she ran her hand along the side of the debris. She waved her arm and pulled her knees to her chest, rotating in the water. Once she was bobbing up and down, Naomi extended her legs and planted her feet on the bottom.

She stood, leaning into the current, and pushed up through the surface, breathing deeply. The rocky shoreline was visible when waves dipped down. Wiping some stray strands of hair off her face, Naomi fought against the current, trying to walk straight towards the beach; she quickly relented and walked as much with the current as she dared. Twice, her back heel slipped off the edge where the seafloor declined sharply, but both times she regained her balance and forged forward, hands waving to and fro in the water ahead of her to push any debris out of the way as well as to steady her footfalls. The pain in her wrist drew her face into a permanent wince, but Naomi forced herself to block out the pain and continue shoreward. Gradually, the waters receded from lapping at her ears, to her chin, then her shoulders. Naomi shivered and ducked her head against the indefatigable rain, shutting her eyes and continuing to shuffle nearer and nearer to land.

Without warning, Naomi's world was turned upside down and she was falling back into the water. Discomfort coursed up her right leg, and she crashed back into the surf, choking on water in surprise. She tried to jerk her foot forward, but she was immobilized, right foot caught between a rock and piece of debris from the bridge where it had washed up on the seabed after the sand underneath her gave way. Scrabbling at her ankle, Naomi tried to free herself without success. It seemed cruel, getting this close to land only to be thwarted by an immovable object she couldn't see. She strained down again, feeling the jagged edge of the debris, but failing to gather enough strength to dislodge it, even as she hopped back closer to the spot where her ankle was trapped.

She took a deep breath, plunging her head underwater and ignoring the biting pain in her left wrist as she grabbed first at the rock, then the debris with both hands. She opened her eyes, trying to make out their shape in the murky, silt-clouded shallow water, but could not. Naomi poked her head back above water, taking another deep breath, and moved to resume her struggle when she heard splashing coming from behind.

"Christ, Campbell, I'm coming. Just wait, will you?"

Naomi turned awkwardly, eyes wide at the red-head wading angrily through the water towards her. "Katie?!"

The eldest Fitch twin ignored her cry, pushing past her and diving underwater. She reappeared presently, sputtering and wiping her mouth. "Give me a hand, yeah?"

Naomi couldn't withhold a smirk and a sarcastic, "You're asking me for what?"

"Shut up." With a pointed look, Katie took a deep breath and nodded at Naomi. Together, they moved underwater and grasped the rock. Straining, they wiggled it slightly, and Naomi pulled her ankle free.

As she stood and stumbled towards the beach, Naomi heard Katie call after her. Shoulders slumping, wrist cradled to her mid-section, the blonde girl let the waves flow past her waist. "Yes?"

"You're not going to wait for me?"

"Oh, like you waited for Emily and I before jumping off that bridge?"

Katie looked up as she sloshed her way up to stand next to Naomi. She turned, joining her in staring at the two spires of concrete still visible above the white-capped waves surging into the bay. The silence hung uncomfortably in the air as the rain fell around them and thunder continued to rumble. Finally, Katie whispered, "I'd know."

"What?" Naomi frowned and looked down at the smaller girl, who continued to stare at the remnants of the bridge with an expression mixing anguish and stubborn hope.

"I'd know if Emily was gone." Katie took a deep breath and looked away from the bay, resuming her walk to shore. Naomi took a wavering breath, biting her lip. She took a step backwards, then rounded and splashed after Katie towards the beach.

* * *

**A/N: **Obviously, I'm not in the business of killing off major characters in chapter 1. But I am a fan of the more-than-occasional cliffhanger. I am very interested in knowing everyone's thoughts on the dual story structure, so any and all comments are welcome! Take care!


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: **This is a bit shorter than the previous chapters—it's been a weird week writing-wise and I wanted to get something out. No Emily (sorry! I promise, she returns very soon), but I suddenly realized where I should go with the story (stories?) herein, which was wonderful. However, I've also been more uncertain this week about continuing than I have been on this or any other project. So more than usual, any sort of encouragement/feedback is welcome this week! Thank you in advance and take care!

**Post #3: Ashes, ashes, we all...fall...down!**

_But I know the neighborhood  
__And talk is cheap when the story is good  
__And the tales grow taller on down the line  
_—'_Take it on the Run,' REO Speedwagon__  
_

The days and first couple weeks after the superstorm passed through all run together for me, to be quite honest, and that's not because I have some huge lapse in memory...it's kind of like induced-amnesia. I mean, can you blame me? The low-lying areas, especially around rivers and lakes, were flooded out and travel throughout the region was shit in large part to bridges being transformed into grotesque monuments of destruction. So travelling to London would have been a bitch and a half for me, and we had no idea what was going to happen or whether the country would be able to rebuild as storms continued to rage and aftershocks rattled windows at all hours of the day and night. So what did we do? We, uh...played a lot of cards?

Drinking may or may not have been involved.

Who am I kidding? Of course it was involved.

See, the earthquake did a lot worse damage than was first apparent that night when I ran smack into Cook. Apparently in California and Japan (you know, places that actually are supposed to have earthquakes) they do this stuff to make buildings sturdier and stronger or something. Which Bristol and everywhere else on the Isles didn't have as extensively, clearly. It wasn't necessarily that buildings were collapsing and crumbling and creating massive clouds of dust like in some over-the-top Roland Emmerich movie, but these glaring red placards began popping up on the entrances of a lot of buildings, warning people that entering the building was unsafe, that there were structural and foundational issues that made living or moving about inside the building perilous.

Or something. We just started calling them, 'Stay the fuck out' signs (SFO's for short).

The other problem was cell phones—or mobiles, if you'd rather—since the quake and the winds from the storm knocked down a ridiculous number of towers up and down the coast. Coverage was spotty and getting crews out to restore service proved difficult, even if it was a top priority so that relief groups could communicate with teams in the field. The interwebs fared a bit better, though (hence the blog, if that wasn't apparent). I guess the fiber optic cables were buried deep enough to not get messed up that badly? Irregardless (I swear it's a word, Mom) we had pretty regular connection to the Internet. At least, in the city we did. The government and Lynx had a strong connection, too, and I think it's mostly wireless from the mobile command centers.

Right, suppose I'm getting a bit ahead of myself. Where were we—sorry, are we—able to get our wireless? That'd be what was apparently an infamous shed prior to the superstorm. I can honestly attest that it's only exceeded that reputation in the year since. It's damn lucky it's still standing, really, since Freddie's house had a tree fall on it during the storm and the backyard flooded (not in a fresh rainwater or run-off sort of way), but the shed remained untouched. At first, yeah, it was really weird that three dudes were basically having an extended sleepover with one gorgeous girl. I'm sure Effy appreciated it when we finally found Emily and she had another girl around, but it was definitely awkward those first few nights, although Cook would insist otherwise, as would Freds.

Maybe it was just me. I doubt it.

Although the majority of that early time does run together, the first night/morning and day are still pretty clear in my mind. We got back to the shed my first night in Bristol absolutely soaked, maybe an hour before sunrise. I had trekked halfway across God's flooded, urban not-so-green earth with the three of them as they tried to find their friends. We ended up on some curved, sloped street with these small walls descending down like long, slate steps in front of each yard. Cook went bounding across one yard and started pounding on the door, without any response. I was walking back with Effy—walking with her arms crossed as if she were out for a Sunday stroll—and Freddie, who had his hands shoved as far down his pockets as they could be. We were three or four houses away but we could hear Cook yelling over the rain and thunder. Freddie finally mumbled to me that this was JJ's house, but he left it at that and didn't say anything more.

Pretty soon we were standing inside one of the most disorganized bedroom's I've ever seen. Model airplanes and cars and spacecraft littered the floor, dislodged from their perches on shelves and molding around the room by the tremors. Planets, suns, and galaxies swirled across the wallpaper. It felt like I stepped out of some time-travel machine into the perfect bedroom for my eight year-old self, only I would have replaced those posters and books about the _Enterprise_ with ones of the _Millennium Falcon_. But that's not really here nor there; I'd apologize for my stream of consciousness, but it's a little late for that, I think.

Bottom line: JJ was nowhere to be found, nor was his mum. We found his dad in the shower, where it looked like he slipped or was knocked off balance by a tremor or something and cracked his head open. I don't think I'll be able to forget the image of all that blood-stained white tile. It was our first (but unfortunately not our last) real encounter with death from all of this, and Freddie and Cook both yacked in the sink without hesitating. Effy, well she just backpedaled and sat down on the stairs, holding herself. I was just there, awkwardly, in between until I decided to sit down next to Effy. She didn't acknowledge me directly, but finally she whispered something along the lines of: "Not exactly the first night you anticipated."

Well, no, not exactly. I didn't really know what to say back, though, since it certainly seemed like it could be one big dream. But once the guys collected themselves and we rooted around downstairs to see if there was any indication where JJ was (unsuccessfully, though when we finally did find him I almost wish we hadn't).

We all walked back across town in silence, even Cook, which surprised me. They kept muttering he's not safe, and something about being 'locked on,' and they tried to call him over and over. Sometimes they'd get it to ring once or twice, but it always cut out without an answer. So we finally made it back to the shed and I unpacked my sparse belongings, draping them over chairs and off of the rafters to dry my clothes out. As I've mentioned, that first night was a bit awkward: Freddie settled on to the couch and Effy joined him after stripping out of her soaked clothing (not that she really was wearing that much to begin with, but still), spooning with him on the long cushions under a thin blanket; Cook stood near the door for a moment, a fag between his lips, before trying to hide a wince at seeing Freddie and Effy as he curled up in the corner furthest from the sofa. His track jacket became his pillow And me? I tried to get comfortable in the ratty old recliner, without much success.

I mean, that's kind of the way it went, wasn't it? For the first couple weeks? No one really knew what was going on, or how many times disaster would really strike. We were waiting for the 'Big One' and scrambling to be prepared. Unfortunately, for a lot of us, that scrambling involved very little sleep and way too much liquor. During the days we'd go looking for people, but we came up empty-handed for a time; during the nights, we'd go looking for anything to forget the days.

Search, be disappointed, drink, smoke, sleep. Rinse and repeat. That's the first two weeks in a nutshell. And then that handbasket I mentioned before fell apart and unleashed hell on us.

* * *

Naomi mindlessly scratched lines into a large rock near her right thigh as she sat with her back against the rough bark of a maple tree. Droplets of rainwater fell from the tips of leaves above her head, splashing lightly against her skin and hair, but the intermittent drops were a major improvement over the deluge she and Katie had slogged through just to find the copse in which they made their camp for the night.

_Correction: where _I _made camp for the night and where Katie just happened to fall asleep_. Naomi shook her head and glanced over at the sleeping teen. Katie was curled up in a small burrow that sat amongst the tangled roots of several trees. Every thirty minutes or so she would snap awake and glance around warily, then fall back asleep. Naomi was puzzled for the first couple instances, then realized why she was so nervous sleeping out in the open in a wooded area. She furrowed her brow and resumed scratching the same thirteen lines into the rock that had preoccupied her for the entirety of the night. Naomi could no longer see the stone in question, but in the middling grey light just before an invisible sunset she had been able to squint through the rain to see the wide, grey stone and the white etchings her first marks made. Everything since had been from memory, one line at a time; Katie's regular stirrings served as natural reminders to move on.

Over Naomi's shoulder, higher up the hill, a twig snapped. Naomi ceased scratching on the rock and froze in place, straining to hear any sort of movement associated with the broken branch. Thunder rumbled low overhead, and Naomi closed her eyes, desperate to hear any sound that would suggest they were not alone in the woods. It had been hours since their last interaction with someone.

They had seen only three people the entire day on their trek from the bay: an elderly man with a broken hip, his walker flung out of reach by the quake, whom they had agreed it prudent to stop and assist as best they could; and a pair of disheveled, awestruck men who wanted nothing more than to be told which direction Cardiff was so they could make it home to their girls. Katie told them to fuck off; however, Naomi attempted to give them a relative bearing towards the southeast and then refused to leave the bus stop near which they met until the men were out of their sight. Her cautious approach brought several invectives from Katie throughout the day, but ever since they stumbled up from the beach and found very few people but dozens of destroyed automobile husks in a car park just before noon, Naomi felt a growing sense of dread settle in her stomach. People should have been swarming all over the place, whether it was vacationers fleeing the seaside on foot after being forced to abandon their transportation, or relief workers arriving to help those injured or lost or stranded.

Instead, Naomi was observing the opposite: fewer and fewer people wandering across the landscape trying to escape the previous night's devastation. So, if there was another person nearby in the woods, Naomi was certain she wanted to observe them first before she announced their presence. She incrementally turned her head to peek around the trunk of the tree, looking up through the inconsistent drops of rain towards where the sound originated.

"What's wrong?" whispered Katie from her hideaway in the roots a little too loudly for Naomi's liking. The blonde waved her hand frantically in the air to quiet Katie, not bothering to look back at her and potentially miss a sign of movement up the hill.

_Pop_. Naomi swivelled her head, focusing on the new sound not more than ten meters to her left. She held her breath, right hand closing protectively around the etched stone next to her leg, desperate for something tangible. A large dark shape moved between some thinner, younger trees down the hill, heading away from the girls and the two broken twigs. The sound of rocks and dirt tumbling down the hill floated back uphill, matching the rough visual Naomi saw of the shape losing its footing and extended a very human arm out to clasp a tree for balance. The shape turned, and Naomi could hear her heart pounding as it looked directly up the hill towards her.

"I'm alright, yeah? What are we doing walking through the bloody woods at night?"

"Shut the fuck up, will ya? We're out here to bring people in for processing, not to go on a nature hike," hissed a voice far too close to Naomi for her comfort. She felt a breath catch in her throat as the second voice replied from just beyond her right shoulder. She couldn't make out his shape in the dark, but...there he was. She flicked her eyes to the right without moving her head and caught a glimpse of his shadowy shape as he walked right over the packed earth on the back encasement of Katie's sleeping spot.

Naomi strained to watch the two shapes as they met up further down the hill. The first shape illuminated a small, blue-hued LED torch and aimed it at his partner, obviously unhappy he had been forced to slip and slide his way down the hill whereas the other one found the way to walk down comfortably. Naomi watched the exchange, then stared after their forms until their shadows were swallowed up by those of the trees and they were out of sight. Not wanting to risk their return up the hill, she brought her knees up to her chest, placing her feet underneath her and rising to a crouch. She whispered softly, "Katie, we have to go _now_."

Katie rolled over and crawled out from under the roots, her body visibly shaking in the dark. Naomi took her hand and tried to make eye contact as best she could, asking a silent question to which Katie responded with a, "Let's go."

No further encouragement was required. Naomi bolted from their camp, running in a half crouch, pulling Katie along behind her, and wincing at the pain in her legs and the soreness in her side from where the debris had struck her earlier. Tightness in her muscles from kicking and walking all day was made worse by the sudden rise and movement after staying perfectly still for so many hours. A cramp manifested itself in her calf and Naomi bit back a yell of pain. Making any sound now seemed to Naomi,as if it could be a death knell. She could hear Katie gasping just behind her as they climbed the hill and headed away from the fourth and fifth people they had seen.

Naomi paused just inside the treeline as they reached the crest of the hill and the woods thinned to a large meadow that flowed down the far side of the hill and over the landscape to the black line of the horizon. _Nowhere to hide_, thought Naomi bitterly, followed by, _Why do you feel like you have to hide? You haven't done anything wrong._

"Who were those guys? What are they talking about, 'process' people?"

Naomi turned and looked at Katie with a raised eyebrow and a quick shrug. "No idea, but they were wearing a uniform, which concerns me. If the government has direct control over the police, or are using regular soldiers, where exactly where they will be focusing their efforts? How can anyone be free again?"

Naomi saw Katie shake her head and look pensively across the field. Finally, she stood and beckoned for Naomi to follow her. "Come on, let's get as far away from here as we can." Naomi nodded agreement and saw Katie step out confidently from the trees and head straight away from the forest. Within moments, the same gnawing in her stomach had returned and Naomi took a step forward to warn Katie; she was too late.

Two more men in uniforms materialized out of the long grasses of the field, standing a couple meters from Katie, hands resting on the pistol holsters on their legs. Naomi took a step back, but collided with something thick and unyielding. She was pulled into a restraining hug and walked forward out into the field.

Naomi could hear Katie beginning to protest. "Stop! We need help. Excuse me, do you hear what I'm fucking asking—"

One of the men produced a black mask to cover Katie's head with, rendering her deaf and blind. Simultaneously, Naomi began to utter an objection, but a matching black hood descended across her field of vision before something firm struck against the back of her skull and consciousness fled. The last coherent thought Naomi could form was that she had forgotten to pick up the stone into which she scratched thirteen unforgettable, simple lines: E-M-I-L-Y


	4. Chapter 4

**Post #4: Of Sinkholes and Redheads**

"_Past the road to your house  
__That you never called home  
__Where they turned out your lights  
__Though they say you'll never know"  
_—'_Desperately Wanting,' Better than Ezra_

When the second...abnormal event happened about a month after the superstorm, we had settled into the quasi-self destructive cycle I touched upon in my last post. Although I guess I should be clear: the world didn't entirely go to shit in that month, not yet at least. Stores still opened and close with regular hours—those not damaged by flooding, that is—and electricity was maintained in the city itself if not the suburbs. It was summer, which meant school's were out for the most part, so our peers were already unleashed on the public without desks and idiotic teachers to confine them during regular working hours. The four of us—Freddie (who never really went to school anyway, from what I've gathered), Cook (who saw school more as an arena to show off his antics in front of a captive audience), Effy (God knows what she thought about school), and I (never really minded school, I just minded unfair teachers and ignorant classmates)—were some of the more 'productive' teens in Bristol at first. I put productive in quotations 'cause as hard as we searched, we never could find any of the rest of their posse...on purpose, at least. Most of the other teens and kids we saw during our excursions through a seemingly permanent rain storm over those first few weeks were doing absolute shit: lying under trees making out, sitting in circles passing spliffs around, or standing in uncomfortable clusters underneath store awnings until shop owners made them move by way of threatening to report them for loitering.

And under normal circumstances, those would have been idle threats. Again, I don't remember too many specific details or events during that first time after the superstorm, but one of the broad brushstrokes I can't forget is the shift in law enforcement mentality. Especially on minor offenses. By which I do mean both offenses committed by teens and kids as well as small misdemeanors. I know, I know, can be clever when I try. So, yeah. Law enforcement changed drastically. It had something to do with the relief efforts, sure, but the epicenter of all the destruction was well north of Bristol, and most of the relief was clean-up and trying to get some temporary infrastructure installed. That didn't justify the crackdown that happened so quickly.

During the day, the police seemed to have completely ramped up their patrols and were out _constantly_. I mean for crying out loud, how many times can you circle common green spaces before it becomes obvious the kids are only playing kicking a ball around and not plotting to graffiti a storefront or rob a convenience store? But that became their normal M.O. Jaywalking suddenly became grounds for an officer stopping, getting out of his car, and marching over to people to sternly reprimand them. And then of course there were SFO violators (the stay the fuck out signs, remember?). Anyone caught coming out of one of those buildings was given a citation immediately, and those caught going in had guns drawn on them. Look, I'm all for keeping people safe, but for Pete's sake, it was taken a little too far if you ask me.

At night, the number of cars making rounds diminished greatly, although the areas they patrolled were far more concentrated. At first we continued to frequent two or three clubs—all of them with entrances located in the back of rank-smelling, floating trash-riddled back alleys—because my adopted friends knew the bouncers or had a friend who worked there...always something. The first time we saw cops come in and just start wailing on a dude who decided he wanted to get up on the bar and do an awkward strip tease for the entire club we silently thanked them. The next time they came into a club they cleared out both bathrooms, batons arcing through the laser lights and strobes freakishly, driving guys and girls half-clothed into the writhing mass of dancers. Ostensibly it was to prevent recreational drug use and the spread of STI's (that's the line they gave when the senior-ranking cop hopped up on the stage and took the mic from the DJ). The third time, no pretense. They just went to town on anyone with a drink in their hand or bloodshot eyes.

We quit going to clubs then and just drank in the shed.

There's a theory out there about broken windows: you fix the small problems and minor crimes, clean up the streets a bit, eventually people decide it's not worth committing the major crimes because life's improved and things are better. It worked in New York City, I guess, but they didn't implement it immediately after a major natural disaster...and right before a second one hit. I'm not criticizing the motivation for wanting to pursue such a harsh crackdown on petty crime—far be it from me to judge whether the government made the wrong decision—but the implementation was poorly executed.

I mean, come on: We're teens. We're rebellious by nature. Hadn't they seen 'Red Dawn?' 'The Outsiders?' Even 'The Hunger Games,' if you think about it. You try and repress young adults and our unstable mix of hormones, shit's going to go sideways for you sooner rather than later. But before things went sideways, they had to go straight down. As in way down.

We were at Effy's (I don't remember the street, just that the house number was unlucky 13), rummaging through her cupboards to find some non-perishables (not a one of us had a job after Freddy got fired from his organizing the greater Bristol area's crap for resale and thus very little in the way of funds) to take back to the shed and cook up on the little hot plate we retrieved from the main house. Effy's house had been flooded out for the first week or so after the storm and earthquake, so we took the occasional detour from our search loop down her street to bucket brigade our way from the front door through the front hall and eventually to the kitchen. The upstairs fared much better; on our third visit I got curious and wandered up, poking around in what had to have been her parents bedroom, which was sparsely furnished but had a tiny hole in the ceiling where rain drip-dropped into a small puddle on the comforter, an empty guest room filled with boxes normally reserved for attics and storage spaces, and what I assumed was Effy's room. Her room overlooked the street through a bay window; the far wall was dominated by a white-painted electric fireplace and mantle with a black grate in front of the fake wood. A glass table just inside the door was littered with clothes, papers, three empty vodka fifths, and an overturned prescription pill container. A poster depicting a side silhouette of a person through innumerable sexual words and phrases hung on one wall and I noticed, moving farther into the room, that Effy had dabbled in some art of her own above the lattice-work of the headboard: she had whited out parts of one word and scrawled a black 'S' in between the first and second word of the wooden plank in such a way that she slept under a reminder for 'Daily Sex.'

"Trying to riddle me out?" I swear I jumped about a foot off the hardwood floor at the sound of Effy's voice. She was picking at her nails, leaning against the railing out on the landing and pretending to be disinterested, but I got the feeling she had been following my every move. I remember her looking up and giving me a small, self-assured smile. Instead of rising to her challenge, I gestured at the empty fifths and offered that I was just looking for anything to add to our ever-expanding liquor cabinet. At the time, only a few days after arriving, I guess I expected her to buy it. But those cobalt eyes saw right through me. She let me walk awkwardly past her and loop around the bannister and pad downstairs. A soft, "You can't, you know," followed me.

Right, I got sidetracked there. Back (or forwards, s'pose) to the sinkhole day. I didn't do any snooping after that third visit to Château Stonem, so I was standing in the pantry, weighing my options between a can of pinto beans and a box of Minute Rice, while Cook—bouncing from foot to foot with excitement at having found a broken-off broom handle in the trash outside—tried to convince Freddie to pitch some spherical table decorations to him. Effy was standing, arms crossed and a fag dangling from her lips, on the back stoop, trying to ignore Cook. I grabbed a second box of rice and leaned around the doorframe, lobbing it to Freddie as I called out his name. Cook roared his approval and pointed the jagged end of the broom handle at me in a salute. I inched a bit farther back behind the wall, watching warily. Freddie rolled his eyes and put the black and white swirled glass sphere, cocking back his arm and tossing the box of rice across the room.

Cook didn't miss. Don't think he'd ever played organized baseball in his life before—I'd count on it, actually—but it was a perfect toss. The box exploded and rice snowed down on the tile floor; we all burst out laughing as the small pieces fell. I heard the door behind me open and Effy sauntered in to regard us with a look of complete and utter disdain. She was about to lace us with something scathing, I'm sure, but she never got the chance. The whole house started to shake around us, plates on the counter vibrating themselves off the counter and into dozens of pieces on the floor. I felt like Effy's house had just become the set of 'Jurassic Park 4' and _T. rex_ was thundering through backyards and newly created ponds and retention ponds.

So, we played it cool. Totally cool.

By which I mean we bolted. Straight out the front door and into the street...where we bowled right into Emily Fitch.

And by we, I mean me. Again. Yeah, it was getting pretty old, running headlong into people. It's one of those habits I wish I hadn't picked up in Bristol, right alongside drinking shit vodka from the bottle and figuring out ways to resist the helpful, order-restoring efforts of Lynx and the government.

I don't feel so bad about running into Cook anymore—sorry, man—cause I've come to feel like he probably deserved it just a bit, getting blindsided like that and then not having me cower and back down but stand up to him. On the other hand, I'll never forgive myself for running into Emily. Partly because of the awkward, terribly uncomfortable way in which I found myself sprawled across her on stone path up to Effy's door, but mostly because of how when I finally untangled myself and stood, extending a hand to help her up, all she kept doing was apologizing when it was clearly me that was at fault. I have a relatively guilty conscience to begin with, but then she fixed me with this embarrassed, sheepish look and I fell apart.

Emily was an absolute mess when she made it (almost all the way) to Effy's door, and then I trucked her like an offensive lineman. She was wearing a torn sweatshirt of some football (the soccer kind, yeah?) club that was about three sizes too big, the cuffs of the sleeves caked in mud and grime as they dangled past her hands and the stitching coming undone along the front pocket so it was pretty much worthless as a handwarmer. Hand still hidden by the sleeve, she pushed her hair back away from her face, drawing attention to the bits of dirt and sand trapped in it and to the scrape marks along her hairline beginning just above her eyebrow and curving down along her jaw. Oh, right, she had definitely been crying as well. She needed a hug is what it really came down to, and instead I unintentionally tackled her.

It didn't take long to realize that everything was still shaking uncontrollably even though we were outside. Freddie wondered aloud if it was another earthquake, but Emily quietly disagreed and said it felt different than before. She was right; this was no earthquake. It was London collapsing in on itself, which was both absurd and terrifying to consider as we walked away from Effy's and Emily pulled the news off a brick of a phone that seemed to have unimpeded access to data despite so many towers being down. Cook immediately wanted to know what it was/how he could get one, but she refused to give a straight answer, instead giving us updates on how quickly the sinkhole was growing as it expanded from some park south of the river and parts of the city not yet disappearing into a 1000-foot deep chasm started flooding worse than they had a month previous.

After two unfamiliar turns, I nudged Freddie and inquired as to where the hell we were going. He nodded towards Emily and said, "Twins' old house."

What?! _Twins_. This group got curious-er by the day, I swear. Apparently not-quite-identical twins to be exact, and Freddie had nothing to offer when I asked where Thing #2 was if Emily was here leading us to her house. Or old house, rather. Not sure why he needed to clarify. Course I found out later it had been foreclosed, yadda yadda yadda, but that's immaterial now that no one's buying homes in Bristol...I mean, it's their loss really since the government has done an outstanding job of rebuilding things, but it's true no one's moving back in. I felt like it was a safe bet that she was not planning on finding her twin at home what with the bruises, tears, and scrapes she'd suffered...somewhere. We finally turned a corner and followed a brick wall overgrown with vines and shrubs, crossing the street at an angle in complete disregard of any hypothetical traffic responsible adults would have chastised us for ignoring. There was a street sign in the yard of a house up ahead, and the shattered glass insets of the front door smiled toothily at us. It also gave me the chills, I think, but it could have been the trembling still spreading from London.

Emily paused as she noticed the broken glass too, and it hit me that it was her house, not some random vandalized home. We shuffled across her front lawn more carefully than we had crossed the street, trying to gaze into the living room window and catch a glimpse of movement. Crickets. Actually it was more like roaches, but they scurried back into the walls and behind dusty furniture as we crunched across the glass pieces in the foyer, which was probably for the best since Emily almost got sick on the threshold. She shouted for someone named 'James,' who I guessed was her brother—which, when followed by raspy calls for Mum and Dad, was confirmed—and slowly walked up the stairs. Cook and Effy began to wander around the ground floor and Freddie just stood in the doorway, so I followed her upstairs.

Or tried to. Almost immediately she came flying back down the stairs, shoving past me and stumbling outside to give in and puke in the front yard. I decided to let things lie and not snoop, but judging by the colorful exclamation from Cook and the pounding of multiple sets of feet on wood, something had rattled him and—

It wasn't Cook barrelling down the hall. Well, not completely true. Cook did go barrelling past the stairs and out the front door, but it was in pursuit of a mangy-looking bum. A squatter. I leapt the last few stairs and jogged outside to find Emily on one knee, wiping the back of her hand across her mouth, and Cook holding a bloodied knife in his hand and yelling curses at the guy running down the street past the vine-covered wall. Once he was out of sight, Cook stopped shouting and tossed the knife into the grass, walking over to put an arm around Emily and rub her back; Effy must've zombie-walked out behind me because as I awkwardly caught Emily's eye when she looked up at us, Freddie began begging Ef to wait up. Grateful for an excuse to look away, I turned to find Effy walking blank-faced across the drive and into the street.

As I watched Freddie grab her and pull her into a resisted hug, I heard Cook mutter that he'd 'Find the fuck and make him pay for doing that to her home, to her family.' My blood cooled considerably at the implicit threat and implications, but it froze completely at her harsh response: 'It was never my home.'

* * *

**Present Day**

"You really think this is a good idea?" whispered Naomi as she held the binoculars firmly to her camouflage-stripped face. Through the lenses, she watched as the two burly guards outside the double doors into the storage shed conducted a brief, half-interested watch turnover with their reliefs. The two who had stood there for the last five hours completely ignorant of Naomi's surveillance returned lazy salutes with the yawning soldiers taking their places on guard duty and stumbled away towards the concession-stand-turned-armory off to Naomi's right between two baseball diamonds.

"We can't very well just leave him alone in there."

"Christ, he's telling them everything! Haven't you read any of the posts?" She dropped the binoculars, holding just between her chin and the damp grass of the berm as she cocked her head to regard her companion.

"Of course I have! And it's pretty obvious he's protecting us as best he can. We owe him one, really."

"Emily..."

"Don't 'Emily' me, Naoms. That only works every one-in-three, now."

Naomi snorted and brought the binos back up to her eyes. "Better odds than it used to be."

Instead of responding, Emily tucked her chin and keyed the hand-held radio, whispering into the black, rectangular transmitter. "Turnover is complete. They're headed your way and look like they're going to fall asleep standing up. You're a go."

Naomi turned her magnified gaze from the shed to the concession stand. She watched the two exhausted guards stop in front of the metal blinds drawn down to prevent people from climbing across the counter and began counting down from ten slowly under her breath. She was vaguely aware of Emily doing the same next to her. The athletic fields and elementary school sprawled out at the foot of the hill below them were silent for the first five seconds of their count, then Naomi watched hell break loose at three times the detail of the human eye, a series of breaths piling up in her throat without release.

On 'six,' the metal blinds clattered up to reveal a messy but heavily renovated concession stand filled with gun lockers, ammunition crates, Kevlar vests and helmets, and other weaponry instead of boxes of frozen jumbo pretzels, hamburger patties, and buttered popcorn. The concession window was criss-crossed by a metal safety cage with only a small, low rectangle removed in the center for passing weapons and equipment through. A single figure stood, back turned to the open window, dressed in black with an equally pitch beanie pulled snugly over his ears.

On 'seven,' on the far side of the shed and well away from the concession stand, fireworks crackled in the early, soft pink light of dawn. Spheres of white and red blossomed and grew; blue streaks hissed and corkscrewed through the sky; most importantly, Naomi noticed (with a quick scan of her binoculars) that the guards at the equipment shed turned and looked straight up in shock at the fireworks. Behind their backs, the sleep-deprived guards they had just relieved turned away from the black-clad figure in the concession stand and gawked, allowing the figure to pivot and draw a silenced pistol from a shoulder holster.

On 'eight,' a second figure popped up from below the counter of the concession stand, aiming his own pistol through the open rectangle in the metal lattice-work. The weapon spat twice, although Naomi could not hear nor see the shots due to the suppressors affixed to the barrel. Both guards slapped a hand to the back of their neck and collapsed in a heap.

On 'nine,' the first intruder moved fluidly out of the concession stand and picked up a carbine from one of the incapacitated guards, sharply driving the bolt forward with the butt of his silenced pistol. Stepping over the body, he headed straight for the equipment shed and its guarded, reinforced steel door. As the guards continued to stare up at the fireworks, the intruder hoisted the pistol in his right hand, firing twice at each guard by Naomi's binocular-aided count. They, too, collapsed to the ground, flailing at exposed area just above their collarbones. Naomi noted that the second intruder had moved to cover the first; his weapon was pointed at the two unconscious guards lying outside the concession stand, but his eyes scanned across each ballfield.

On Emily and Naomi's simultaneous count of 'ten,' the fireworks stopped and the first intruder reached the shed guards and turned, arms spread out in triumph, grinning up at the berm. A small, cocky voice warbled out of Emily's radio, the words delayed slightly from when Naomi could see the person's lips moving below them.

"Told you it wouldn't take more than five seconds, blondie. You've got to stop betting me on things otherwise I might win something you can't bear to part with."

"What did you bet him this time?" whispered Emily without keying the radio. Naomi watched Cook bend down and pull the keys off the belt of one guard and start trying them in the steel door as she chewed on her bottom lip and delayed in answering Emily's question.

"Well?" Emily insisted. Cook finally found the proper key and he motioned for the second intruder to come over and help with the door. Sighing, Naomi gripped the binoculars tighter.

"I bet him my week's worth of drinks."

"Shit."

**A/N: **Yes, I plan on jumping all over the place chronologically with this one. Yes, I will be going back to what happens to Naomi and Katie. I'm trying to have a bit more fun with this one. New chapter for 'Loudest' should be up Monday at the very latest, if anyone was wondering. Take care!


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